Dear listeners,
I first met Daniel Biss more than a decade ago when he was an Illinois state senator working to rein in that state’s unsustainable debts related to public employee pensions. Now, he’s the mayor of Evanston and very likely soon to be a member of Congress representing Chicago’s north side and northern suburbs. He just won the Democratic nomination in a hugely expensive primary election — over $10 million was spent, much of it by AIPAC-linked groups dissatisfied with his positioning as a “progressive Zionist.” We had an interesting conversation with Daniel about the changing way Democrats are relating to Israel, and the extent to which debates about the country are coming to dominate intraparty contests, even while voters tell pollsters the issue isn’t that important to them.
We also talk about Medicare for All — Daniel, like most of his opponents in the primary, says he supports it, but where’s the appetite for the sorts of broad-based tax increases that would be required to finance it? How would progressives go about convincing the public that it’s worth paying more taxes to receive more government services? Daniel sits well to my left, but he’s one of the smartest people I’ve met in elected office, and I think the conversation we had with him on these topics was really interesting.
We also check in on the Iran war — Jamie Kirchick sat in for Ben who’s off this week, and took up the thankless job of being the panelist who thinks some good could actually come from all of this.
We talk about Gavin Newsom’s emergent strategy when fighting Republicans on the internet: calling them gay. Barney Frank says this is homophobic, but Newsom’s office tells The New York Times something I fully believe: the staffers writing the “you’re gay” tweets are themselves gay. But what might make sense as an in-joke among the gays sounds weird when put in the mouth of a straight politician, and it’s part of a broader issue with gay Democratic communicators amusing themselves by putting gay words in their straight bosses’ mouths. Are we really supposed to believe that 83-year-old House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro is making jokes about Rita Ora and the Khia Asylum? Let’s let straight Democrats be straight again.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
